And if they are not to be blamed for so doing, let
us see whether Christians do not exhort multitudes to the practice of
virtue in a greater and better degree than they. For the
philosophers who converse in public do not pick and choose their
hearers, but he who likes stands and listens. The Christians,
however, having previously, so far as possible, tested the souls of
those who wish to become their hearers, and having previously
instructed
35943594προεπᾴσαντες. them in private,
when they appear (before entering the community) to have sufficiently
evinced their desire towards a virtuous life, introduce them then, and
not before, privately forming one class of those who are beginners, and
are receiving admission, but who have not yet obtained the mark of
complete purification; and another of those who have manifested to the
best of their ability their intention to desire no other things than
are approved by Christians; and among these there are certain persons
appointed to make inquiries regard
485ing the lives and behaviour of those who join
them, in order that they may prevent those who commit acts of infamy
from coming into their public assembly, while those of a different
character they receive with their whole heart, in order that they may
daily make them better. And this is their method of procedure,
both with those who are sinners, and especially with those who lead
dissolute lives, whom they exclude from their community, although,
according to Celsus, they resemble those who in the market-places
perform the most shameful tricks. Now the venerable school of the
Pythagoreans used to erect a cenotaph to those who had apostatized from
their system of philosophy, treating them as dead; but the Christians
lament as dead those who have been vanquished by licentiousness or any
other sin, because they are lost and dead to God, and as being risen
from the dead (if they manifest a becoming change) they receive them
afterwards, at some future time, after a greater interval than in the
case of those who were admitted at first, but not placing in any office
or post of rank in the Church of God those who, after professing the
Gospel, lapsed and fell.